


Quiet Graves

by LivaWilborg



Category: Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Assassin's Creed: Rogue, Dead bonus-parents, Other, Precursor box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 23:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6214387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LivaWilborg/pseuds/LivaWilborg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shay returns to New York in February, 1777, just months after the great fire.<br/>His mission is almost complete. He carries the precursor box, taken from Charles Dorian's dead hands.<br/>He should go straight to the Grand Master with this, but the weight of sixteen years, his home city in ruins under British occupation and fifty-six more victims on his conscience force him to take stock of his life. </p><p>...This is officially the most depressing story I ever wrote.<br/>Also, it has no steamy stuff in it. Sorry.<br/>...Really odd, I know! =D Who wants to read that?!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet Graves

…Caught somewhere between the need to run, to finally complete the mission, and the need to slow down to a crawl, hide, never see the light of day again. So close to the goal. So far away.

He had been compelled to pay an exorbitant bribe to get into the city. He didn’t have the energy to pretend to be a merchant. To pretend to care about the politics and choose a side. …Gold spoke to most people in a much louder voice than loyalty, anyway. 

At every corner he rounded, the city he grew up in showed itself, familiar, yet different. Little or large nuances, changes he hadn’t been there to take in as they happened and make part of his memory of New York.

His feet felt heavy as lead but he forced himself to take step upon step. No. It wasn’t his feet that were heavy, he realised. It was the small box, hiding in the bag hooked to his belt, that was weighing him down. It had taken so long. So many years…

His feet slowly but purposefully led him to the destruction on the south-east bank, through rubble and along the burnt-out husks of houses, even though his presumed destination lay in a different direction.

He hadn’t fully believed the destruction, even though the story of the fire that had gutted the city had been relayed by a passing merchant vessel ten days past.  He had caught his first glimpse of the city from the crow’s nest hardly more than two hours ago, a cancerous patch of blackness in the rays of a pale, February sunset. Nearly a third of his former home, ruined, crumbled. Broken corpses of buildings reaching blindly for the merciless heavens. It occurred to him that this shattered welcome was the only one that could be appropriate. Welcomed back by destruction. Like Lisbon. So long ago. Rubble. Nothing more.

Like him, the burned-out houses had done their duty and fallen apart.

His feet carried him, choosing the direction of their own accord. He knew where he had to go, but couldn’t summon up the strength to direct himself consciously. He walked between buildings that still stood, though changed, marked by smoke, gunfire, artillery, neglect, turning into a familiar alleyway opening up to a small square. There used to be people living here quietly, but now apparently the hum of normality had given way to impromptu taverns, the houses vomiting forth half-tuned music and drunk English soldiers. The war and the British occupation had forced most citizens to flee, it seemed.

He walked on, away. Unthinking. His feet decided.

A group of drunk soldiers passed him in a dark, deserted street. Someone bumped into him. There were shouts and insults. He didn’t stop.

 _Not another one._ he thought. _Don’t make me add another._

Something hit his back. A stone, he saw, looking down at the snow-slushed mud at his feet. He couldn’t feel the pain. He turned. Listened to the drunken curses from the man who seemed desperate to become victim number fifty-seven, his drinking-mates close behind him.

“Don’t do this.” he interrupted, knowing it wouldn’t work. “I can’t show you mercy.”

The attack came. The response was brutal and swift. The other soldiers joined their fallen friend.

He stood looking at the mud-soaked uniforms a moment before checking each for a pulse. Fifty-seven was now accompanied by Fifty-eight. The other three were still living, if crippled.

Pointless.

What difference did it make anyway...

He’d been so careful the first couple of years of his search. Even smiled and congratulated himself in his mind when he had managed to go a whole year without taking a life. Not the Templar way, unless forced. What an idiot…

His feet took him in a new direction. He didn’t think or question, but simply concentrated on carrying his numb body. The weight wasn’t the box in the belt-pouch, he realised. It was time. It was sixteen years holding him down. No, not even that. It was the small boy, half crushed under an impossibly huge slab of stone, his own blood spattering his face, matting his hair to his forehead, crying _mãe,_ as he died; _mommy_ … It was sin. Guilt. Responsibility. He had seen it. Vividly. But he ran on. To save himself.

He still plodded on. The street became mercifully recognisable. Another followed. He was there. Knocked at the door in the darkness. The shutters were closed. No footsteps approached. He knocked again. Again. Again.

“Mrs. Finnegan.” he heard his own voice call. “Cassidy?”

Movement close by. The door of the neighbouring house opened and an elderly woman looked him over, a lantern held high to bathe him in light. She studied him.

“Who’re you, Sir?” she asked, the soft Irish song in her voice oddly comforting to his ears.

“Shay. Cormac. …I have to speak to Mrs. Finnegan.”

The woman’s face fell and she looked at him kindly: “I’m so sorry.” She shook her head. “Cassidy is gone to meet her maker just six days hence.”

He looked blankly at her.

“Dead.” He simply heard his voice, knew it was his, but didn’t recognise it. “Dead.” he repeated.

The woman nodded slowly, her eyes tearing over. She moved, offering him room to come in: “Come inside, _a leanbh_.”

“I’m not a child.” he responded tonelessly.

“Perhaps, but Cassi loved you like a son, and I loved her for being the kindest woman on God’s earth. What would she think if I didn’t take you in. You look a fright.”

Shay’s hand slowly locked on the doorpost of the Finnegan house, keeping himself steady. “How did it happen?”

“Just time and age and will of the Lord. She slept quietly into peace.”

He wasn’t certain how long he stood there, just looking at the elderly woman with the lantern, his mind trying to grasp the loss.

“Where is she buried?” he finally managed.

“Up north, at Saint Patricks Plot. But you shouldn’t go there now. Not in the dark.” she added, seeing him dislodge his grip on the doorpost and take a few steps.

He stopped. “Did she get my letters?”

“She did. And the pretty trinkets and baubles you sent through the years. She wore the silk-shawl under the shroud. I saw to that. It was her favourite.”

He wanted to thank her, but his teeth had locked together and he couldn’t force them apart. All he could do was nod and leave, his feet again carrying him into the darkness.

It had started snowing long before he found the small cemetery. A wet, clinging kind of icy flakes, sticking to his lashes before thawing, running down his cheeks as tears. The white on the ground made it easier to see in the night, the moon only occasionally free of the heavy clouds. In the silence, he brushed the wet snow off one cross after the other, seeing ended lives paraded before his eyes by the dozens before he finally found one bearing the inscription _Barry Patrick Finnegan, 1699 - 1771_. 

He stared at it and suddenly the laughter came, nearly overwhelming him, dropping him to his knees as he laughed and fought for air.

“Your middle name was Patrick, you sour old codger!” his voice gasped emptily among the graves and he quickly forced himself to his feet, frantically brushing the snow off the cross next to it. He stopped. _Shane Finnegan, 1726 – 1754_.

“…Shane.” He looked at the cross. Then he looked down at his boot-prints on the grave. He stepped aside. Solemn. “Apologies.” he whispered. Then: “I took your place. But I did a piss-poor job of it. Sons come home on occasion.”

He moved slowly the few paces to the grave next to Shane’s. The wood of the cross under the snow was freshly hewn. A wreath of evergreens hid at the foot of it. He read Cassidy’s name.

The snow had gathered on his still body when he finally found himself kneeling in the cold before Shane’s grave, the other two flanking him.

“Thank you for the coat.” Shay finally said softly. “…Had it repaired many times. Once by a very pretty seamstress in Amsterdam. Fourteen years ago. Very forthcoming. Golden hair. Pretty as a lark.” He shook his head at himself, dislodging the snow that had gathered in his hair. It stuck in his scarf, melted, ran down his neck. He didn’t feel it. “It fell apart eventually, of course. All things do. But it was good while it lasted.”

He looked at Barry’s cross. Then, demanding more conviction, at Cassidy’s. “You took me in. Though you had no reason to. You gave me nothing but kindness, and I never really thanked you. Cassi…” his voice again was stuck behind his teeth. He waited. Didn’t fight it, until the voice was back, sounding rough in his ears. “You wanted me to be happy, I remember you told me. Just that. Happy. I never really understood it. I never thought of life that way. Like Shane, I did all I did because-“ he stopped. In the end, all that came to mind was: “because it was my duty. To the Temple, anyway. Before that, I did it because I thought it was probably right. But I never paused to think if that was true.”

His mind became as blank as the snow hiding the names on the crosses again. 

Shay’s body felt cold and unresponsive when he finally made to stand up. Picking himself up was slow work, but he got to his feet, taking in the sight of the three white crosses before him.

“All the atrocious acts I committed after Lisbon, the murders, the killings, bloodshed… I thought I was doing it to spare others pain. Innocents. …Spare anyone but me.”

He turned, walking a few paces, his icy joints and old wounds finally complaining in a cacophony of heated pain. Sighing, he waited patiently for it to pass, his hand resting on the belt bag, feeling the precursor box’s sharp edges under the leather.

“My duty is almost completed.” Shay said, to nobody in particular. Then he walked out of the graveyard, past the ended lives again, and back to the light of the city.


End file.
